Vinyl records

flhrci

flhrci

Final Approach
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David
I am from the era of vinyl records. I was wondering if its really worth going and getting a turntable system and records. I see the record prices go from around $15 to more than $30 or higher per record now. Curious about people's thoughts.
 
Are there vinyl records that haven't been remastered on CD?
 
I'm also from the era of vinyl, and no one was happier than me when CDs took over (and happier still when MP3, etc., supplanted CDs). I never liked having to flip a record, nor did I like the crackling and popping. No matter how hard I tried to keep static and dust off the vinyl, there was still a level of crackling and popping - drove me nuts!

My wife and I still have a huge vinyl collection that's been gathering dust in our storage building for 30 years. I've never been tempted to return to playing those records. When I want to listen to, for example, Rush Hemispheres, then I play it via our Spotify account.

For nostalgic reasons I'm glad there are audiophiles who enjoy the supposed warmth and depth of music on vinyl and are keeping the old technology alive. But count me out.
 
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ETres said:
I'm also from the era of vinyl, and no one was happier than me when CDs took over (and happier still when MP3, etc., supplanted CDs). I never liked having to flip a record, not did I like the crackling and popping. No matter how hard I tried to keep static and dust off the vinyl, there was still a level of crackling and popping - drove me nuts!

My wife and I still have a huge vinyl collection that's been gathering dust in our storage building for 30 years. I've never been tempted to return to playing those records. When I want to listen to, for example, Rush Hemispheres, then I play it via our Spotify account.

For nostalgic reasons I'm glad there are audiophiles who enjoy the supposed warmth and depth of music on vinyl and are keeping the old technology alive. But count me out.
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You make good points that I had forgotten about. I also just remembered the storage issue to. Hmmmm...
 
I applaud anyone who does it for the nostalgia.

About a year ago we gave up on physically owning music. We had moved a 550 CD collection to our new E TN home.

39954617353_f2a9053732.jpg


And that’s not nearly all of them.

It had literally been years since we had drug one out to listen to, and we decided to let them all go. We have a huge McKays Used Books and CD’s near us that bought them in batches for what added up to maybe $400 altogether. Though a pitiful fraction of what they collectively cost, they’re gone now and we haven’t missed them at all. Apple Music puts 99% of what we might listen to at our fingertips, though there are of course many options there.

As far as sound quality/fidelity, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of difference between formats to our aging ears.
 
FastEddieB said:
I applaud anyone who does it for the nostalgia.

About a year ago we gave up on physically owning music. We had moved a 550 CD collection to our new E TN home.

39954617353_f2a9053732.jpg


And that’s not nearly all of them.

It had literally been years since we had drug one out to listen to, and we decided to let them all go. We have a huge McKays Used Books and CD’s near us that bought them in batches for what added up to maybe $400 altogether. Though a pitiful fraction of what they collectively cost, they’re gone now and we haven’t missed them at all. Apple Music puts 99% of what we might listen to at our fingertips, though there are of course many options there.

As far as sound quality/fidelity, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of difference between formats to our aging ears.
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I have about 400 CDs. I've ripped them to my computer, and copied them to OneDrive and also a thumb drive. I use the thumb drive in my car, and while I'm working from the basement, I use CloudPlayer to play them to a bluetooth speaker from my phone, since I'm working from my employer's computer, and I don't want to have my PC running all day.

I have no fondness for vinyl records, I was very glad to move to CDs. When I was dealing with vinyl records, I'd buy one, bring it home and play it once, then wait a day and record it to a cassette, both to have it available in the car and because I didn't want to deal with the records.

When I listen to classical music, I do so directly from the CD, I don't want to deal with the fidelity loss that goes with ripping the CD.
 
It’s not something I’m really into but I recently noticed Wal-Mart was selling records again. They had a whole shelf full.
 
I was never so happy as I was on the day I tossed the turntable for a cd player. Not going backward.
 
Still have a turntable and all my old LPs. Just in case the internet dies...;)

I think the sale of vinyl now is just another retro fad. A few years ago it was vacuum-tube amplifiers again. I laughed; the new amps had two compact tubes that would have just been the first or second stage amplifiers. Hidden inside would be transistors or a chip for the other stage and two power transistors for the output, or maybe one heavy chip for the whole thing, with the tubes just glowing and doing nothing else. The power supply would also be something modern.
 
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ETres said:
I'm also from the era of vinyl, and no one was happier than me when CDs took over (and happier still when MP3, etc., supplanted CDs). I never liked having to flip a record, not did I like the crackling and popping. No matter how hard I tried to keep static and dust off the vinyl, there was still a level of crackling and popping - drove me nuts!

My wife and I still have a huge vinyl collection that's been gathering dust in our storage building for 30 years. I've never been tempted to return to playing those records. When I want to listen to, for example, Rush Hemispheres, then I play it via our Spotify account.

For nostalgic reasons I'm glad there are audiophiles who enjoy the supposed warmth and depth of music on vinyl and are keeping the old technology alive. But count me out.
Click to expand...

I'm certain I was at least as happy as you.
 
The only reason I can think of to own a turntable and vinyl is to..ttoo...rrrr..rrr.. too.. rrr...rrrr...rrrr

wikiwikiwiki
 
Vinyl has outsold CDs recently.

The resurgence is pretty widespread.

I own two professional turntables that were the rage in the Grand Master Flash era...I don't think they have had power on them for 10 or more years. I should sell them.
 
There's nothing wrong with getting a turntable if you already have a cache of old vinyl you want to listen to for nostalgia. It's not something I'd really bother with if you don't already have the records on hand, and buying new vinyl is just kind of silly since the music wasn't originally mastered to be on vinyl anyway.

I'd just stick with buying music in formats like FLAC so that you keep as much fidelity as possible.
 
I still have my old turntable and vinyl that I was certain would never be transferred to other media. I have found more and more that I am wrong and have been replacing mp3's made from my vinyl with better digital recordings of obscure music. I'm not ready to give it up yet. Cassettes, OTOH, will always have a life for me, with a lot of demos and mixtapes that used to be handed out at shows. These will never be 'remastered' or even transferred...and in some cases we're probably better off for it. :confused:

Nauga,
live from Tommy's basement
 
What I REALLY miss VERY much about vinyl LPs are cover art and liner notes. I’ve learned more about artists and their music from liner notes than anywhere else.
Look at a Santana LP cover art sometime.
 
ETres said:
I'm also from the era of vinyl, and no one was happier than me when CDs took over (and happier still when MP3, etc., supplanted CDs). I never liked having to flip a record, not did I like the crackling and popping. No matter how hard I tried to keep static and dust off the vinyl, there was still a level of crackling and popping - drove me nuts!

My wife and I still have a huge vinyl collection that's been gathering dust in our storage building for 30 years. I've never been tempted to return to playing those records. When I want to listen to, for example, Rush Hemispheres, then I play it via our Spotify account.

For nostalgic reasons I'm glad there are audiophiles who enjoy the supposed warmth and depth of music on vinyl and are keeping the old technology alive. But count me out.
Click to expand...

You can sell it one at the time for pretty big bucks if in good condition

To OP. Not worth it unless you really want it.

I still have records and a pair of technics that are collecting dust
 
Kelvin said:
Vinyl has outsold CDs recently.

The resurgence is pretty widespread.

I own two professional turntables that were the rage in the Grand Master Flash era...I don't think they have had power on them for 10 or more years. I should sell them.
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There is definitely a resurgence, but the big part of that - CDs are history
 
When I finally get around to it, I'll be recycling my old old old receiver, cassette deck, and turntable (and speakers) (late 70's vintage). It kills me to toss them, but they were not high-end (or even mid-range) equipment. I've just been procrastinating.
 
Bob Noel said:
When I finally get around to it, I'll be recycling my old old old receiver, cassette deck, and turntable (and speakers) (late 70's vintage). It kills me to toss them, but they were not high-end (or even mid-range) equipment. I've just been procrastinating.
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I held onto my low-end stuff for a long time just so that I could listen to my low-end music :D

ETA: all my stuff about old music notwithstanding, I wouldn't go back to vinyl as an original source for new music as long as there is a digital alternative.

Nauga,
who favors the low-fi style
 
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I bought a record player not for the sound but for the lack of a Skip or Shuffle button. At some point, I realized while shuffling and skipping around my 10,000-track digital music library that some albums were composed as such and I owed it to Jimi or Pete to listen to them straight through. (I lack the self control to keep my hand off the Skip button, so technical intervention was necessary.)
 
I’m a member of a couple of “vintage hi-fi” groups. Most are somewhat unhappy everyone decided to “get back into it” during stay-home Covid stuff. Prices have skyrocketed.

As for me, the record collection was gone long ago. I love my receivers and amps from the era of linear beasts but two now need major restoration work (pots and caps going bad — not awful to do but time consuming and not fun with a bad hand at the healing bench) and the rest keep chugging along.

I think I finally popped a tweeter on one of the early 70s Kenwood speakers too. Bummer. Brittle. Rebuild time.

On the flip side during Covid many long time group members had friends and acquaintances call up and offer them pristine systems just to get rid of them as they remodeled the house. We’re all green with envy about those.

Turntable is a labor of love and spendy at today’s record prices. Can do high quality streaming straight into one of these old amps that sound great for about $100 a year and millions of titles.

Of course that’s the sales pitch but most of us don’t listen to millions of titles. I have thousands in playlists though. I wouldn’t want to purchase that many albums.

Depending on which ecosystem of music you’re in, there’s multiple ways to get a streaming device hooked to every stereo in the house for less than $30.

And almost all can do synchronized playback now in groups, so you can build a far far better quality “whole house” system than you can buy from Sonos or any of the modern amp makers who have proprietary sync protocols (like Yamaha).

I keep the CD changers but they rarely get used and can’t imagine putting a turntable back into the mix. The good stuff new runs a grand, the old good stuff is bumping the underside of that. Then $30 an album...

That can pay for a lot of years of streaming.

My weapon of choice is the Amazon Echo Dot. Buying a used Gen 2 or a new Gen 3 during one of many annual sales means they were all $25 or less.

For super hi-fi fans there’s services that stream much higher bitrates and devices with very high end DACs even down at lower price points.

We send a couple of video streamers (fire sticks) into the Echos via Bluetooth from a couple of the TVs and since they’re always on and wired to the stereos, you get good (but not surround) sound as well as Alexa commands and responses from the stereos nice and loud.

Which... is also the only item in our home automation that needs “cloud”... kinda. Echos are integrated both locally to Home Assistant for speaking arbitrary alerts and announcements and also thru the Nebu Casa servers to do certain voice commands. (Can be fully down or blocked from the internet and about half the functionality works.)
 
iamtheari said:
I bought a record player not for the sound but for the lack of a Skip or Shuffle button. At some point, I realized while shuffling and skipping around my 10,000-track digital music library that some albums were composed as such and I owed it to Jimi or Pete to listen to them straight through. (I lack the self control to keep my hand off the Skip button, so technical intervention was necessary.)
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Yep im a compulsive skipper playing the whole album has made me rediscover songs and appreciate the composition of an album. Plus for me theres something satisfying about the mechanical nature of vinyl, like a fine watch or clock yeah a 10 dollar digital one works better but sometimes its gratifying watching something work.
 
I'm thinking of getting back into minidiscs.
 
Jim K said:
I'm thinking of getting back into minidiscs.
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As a live performance recording medium those were/are great. Wife used one with quality mics fed into it for years to record rehearsals and gigs.

Super portable setup ran a full day on a single AA and a 9V battery for the mic phantom power — but she eventually caved to just using her phone.
 
We still have my father's Marantz tuner and amp from the late-70s, which are obviously tube-powered and it all still works just fine. Probably needs new caps but its mostly for nostalgia. He has some pretty nice KLH cabinet speakers as well for that true quadraphonic experience. He has several hundred vinyl albums that occasionally get played on his Pioneer turntable, but mostly it's a conversation piece. When he really wants to get immersed in the music, the theater room is just down the hall and has a full complement of modern AVR equipment and 7.1.4 surround sound. He usually like watching live concerts on blueray.
 
PaulS said:
I was never so happy as I was on the day I tossed the turntable for a cd player. Not going backward.
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Thank you. I HATE vinyl records. Once years ago when I went to record a virgin disk onto reel-to-reel tape (a record that I had coveted for a long time) and heard all the clicks, pops, scratches, etc. I literally ripped my (Dual) turntable off its shelf (not being very gentle) and jammed it into the wood stove. By next morning it was a chunk of scrap metal with a pool of lead underneath. Never looked back. I hate vinyl records. Hate 'em, hate 'em, hate 'em.

Tim
 
We still have a few dozen albums from the pre-CD era. I like the memory of them from when they were new. Unfortunately we never had a decent stereo, so they’re mostly not in great condition. My kids gave me a fairly nice turntable a few (OK, a bunch of) years ago. Nice compared the the cheap crap I always had in the 70s anyway, nothing like the super fancy stuff you can spank a grand or two on. I do still like to throw one or two on the turntable, and I do like the way they sound... the ones that aren’t scuffed all to hell. But it’s rare. Once in a gray while, though, it’s fun to slip on the Koss Pro 4AA headphones and listen to A Night at the Opera or Point of Know Return or whatever.
 
DaleB said:
We still have a few dozen albums from the pre-CD era. I like the memory of them from when they were new. Unfortunately we never had a decent stereo, so they’re mostly not in great condition. My kids gave me a fairly nice turntable a few (OK, a bunch of) years ago. Nice compared the the cheap crap I always had in the 70s anyway, nothing like the super fancy stuff you can spank a grand or two on. I do still like to throw one or two on the turntable, and I do like the way they sound... the ones that aren’t scuffed all to hell. But it’s rare. Once in a gray while, though, it’s fun to slip on the Koss Pro 4AA headphones and listen to A Night at the Opera or Point of Know Return or whatever.
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A Night at the Opera on vinyl was probably the album of my father's I played the most. It was fun to listen to The Prophet's Song while playing with the balance/fader to hear the vocals from 1 of the 4 channels.
 
There are studios that make analog-only music and cut and press vinyl only. No digits.

Probably the only actually cool thing the hipsters have contributed to the world.
 
iamtheari said:
I bought a record player not for the sound but for the lack of a Skip or Shuffle button. At some point, I realized while shuffling and skipping around my 10,000-track digital music library that some albums were composed as such and I owed it to Jimi or Pete to listen to them straight through. (I lack the self control to keep my hand off the Skip button, so technical intervention was necessary.)
Click to expand...
Yeah, I’m of the opinion that artists record songs on an LP in a chosen thought out order (or at least used to).
Definitely true for Classical....movements ordered.
 
I got caught up in the vinyl fad about a year ago. It was kind of fun to go digging though the records at my local record shop. I made a point of every time I'd buy an album that I am familiar with, to go to the $5 rack and buy something I had never heard of. I did that for a few months, and then got bored of it....which I have a habit of doing with hobbies.
 
ETres said:
I'm also from the era of vinyl, and no one was happier than me when CDs took over (and happier still when MP3, etc., supplanted CDs). I never liked having to flip a record, not did I like the crackling and popping. No matter how hard I tried to keep static and dust off the vinyl, there was still a level of crackling and popping - drove me nuts!
Click to expand...

Yup yup yup. Finicky turntables, delicate cartridges, all the cleaning fluids and anti-static guns. Glad to give it up when I bought my 1st CD player, a nice Yamaha. I held on to my turntable (B&O BeoGram) for a good while, but finally sold it to an enthusiast a few years back.
 
Does anyone else remember an album that always skipped in the same place? Such that they can’t hear a certain song without anticipating the skip?

Mine is Phil Och’s “Draft Dodger Rag”. The verse went...

"Sarge, I'm only eighteen, I got a ruptured spleen
And I always carry a purse
I've got eyes like a bat and my feet are flat
My asthma's getting worse"

It skipped so as to play, “I’ve got eyes like a...purse...I’ve got eyes like a...purse...I’ve got eyes like a...purse...”

Whenever I hear the song now, I anticipate a skip that never comes!
 
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